Look Closer(24)

“I know,” I whisper. “I know.”

“It just broke her. Y’know? It just . . . broke her.”

It broke Simon, too, as it does now, as he chokes back tears.

I rub his back. “It’s all gonna be okay,” I tell him. “Everything will turn out fine.”

“I wish I was so confident.”

“Let me help you with this problem,” I say. “Let me help you with the dean.”

? ? ?

“No.” Simon breaks away from me and wags his finger. “No. Thank you, but no.”

“Why not? You said it yourself. The dean owns you. If you buckle the moment he raises your past, he’ll know he always has this over you. You’ll never get out from under his thumb.”

“I don’t care. I’ll . . . go to another school or something.”

“But you’ll obsess about this the rest of your life, Simon. I know you. You’ll obsess about Dean Cumstain and Reid Southern like you obsess over that high school jock Mitchell Kitchens.”

He picks up the bottle of Jack and takes another pull, the wind carrying his bangs. “I don’t obsess about him.”

“Ha!”

He looks at me and starts to reply but thinks better of it. Simon has often joked that he has Irish Alzheimer’s—he only remembers the slights, the grudges.

“This is different,” he says. “This is my career. This is what I’ve chosen to do with my life. I don’t want this to be . . . I don’t know . . . tainted, I guess. I don’t want to get this position because I turned the tables on the dean and blackmailed him or something.”

“You won’t get the position unless the faculty votes you in, unless you get it on merit,” I say. “All you’re doing is making sure the dean doesn’t sabotage you.”

He shakes his head, long and slowly. “No, Vicky. I’m not doing it.”

? ? ?

Simon heads off to bed drunk and depressed, and past his bedtime, given how early he gets up in the morning. I tuck him in and head down the hall to the office.

I told Christian Newsome I’d show him the trust language that restricts how Simon spends his trust—how it cuts his wife off from any access to the money until ten years of marriage.

I pull up the PDF of the amendment to the Theodore Dobias Trust that gave Simon his money, but with the string attached. I fix on that language, that wonderful little surprise that Ted left Simon on his death:

(a) In the event SIMON gets married to an individual (“SPOUSE”), the proceeds of this trust may not be spent in any way by or for the benefit of SPOUSE for a period of ten (10) years following the first day of SIMON’s marriage to SPOUSE. This restriction includes, but is not limited to, the following: (1) expenditures on anything that would jointly benefit both SIMON and SPOUSE, including but not limited to . . .

What an asshole, to do that to Simon against his wishes. Give him the money or don’t. But to do what he did, to hog-tie Simon like that, to put his foot on the chest of Simon’s marriage before it even starts? Talk about emasculating.

And, of course, there’s this:

In and only in the event that SIMON and SPOUSE remain married for the period of ten (10) years, and no petition for dissolution of marriage has been filed by either SIMON or SPOUSE within that time, the restriction on the expenditure of proceeds in paragraph (a) above shall cease to operate.

If you stay married to Simon for ten years like a good girl, “spouse,” and if nobody’s even filed for divorce within those ten years, “spouse,” then you can put your greedy, grimy hands on the money. Because then you’ll have earned it, “spouse.”

Why so cynical, Teddy? Not every woman marries for money.

Only some do.

? ? ?

In the corner of the room, the printer starts grinding and spitting out the pages of the trust. My phone rings, a FaceTime call from my nieces, the M&Ms, Mariah and Macy. I throw in my AirPods so the noise won’t awaken Simon.

When I answer, it’s only Mariah, the thirteen-year-old, on the call. As best as I can make out through the grainy image, she doesn’t look happy. No one can perfect a frown better than a thirteen-year-old girl.

“Hi, pumpkin!” I say, trying to keep my voice down, closing the office door.

“It happened,” she says.

It—Oh, right.

“Okay. Well, okay. We knew this would be coming, right?”

She nods, but her face wrinkles into a grimace.

“It’s okay, Mariah, it’s normal, perfectly normal. You put a pad on?”

She nods her head, tears falling. It’s emotional enough, getting your period the first time; not having your mother around, and having all that come back, too, doubles the fun.

“Great! So listen, did you talk to your dad?”

“No!” she spits out.

“Well, honey, you can’t keep this from your father. He knows it’s coming, too.”

Yes, her father, my ex-brother-in-law, Adam, knows that adolescent girls get their period. And without a wife, without a woman in the home, he’s been terrified of this moment. Men have no clue about the female anatomy.

“When are you . . . when are you coming?” she manages.

“I’ll come this weekend, honey, okay? I’ll come Friday night and stay the weekend.”